~ serial lives: 22 years of writings & musings

column 09/2017

Kristen Stewart became a household name, worldwide, on the strength of six top-grossing movies from 2008 – 2012. The five Twilight movies and Snow White & the Huntsman were international sensations.

Interestingly, during that five year period she continued her career in independent films; specifically with co-starring roles in The Runaways in 2010 as musician Joan Jett and the 2012 Jack Kerouac inspired On the Road as a girlfriend to the legendary & fictional Dean Moriarty.

Kristen has continued with her recent career focused primarily on independent films since her commercial success of 2008 -2012. She has contributed to rich ensemble performances in 2014’s Still Alice, 2015’s Anesthesia and 2016’s Certain Women. She has given career-peak performances in three other post-2012 films.

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2014’ Camp X-Ray saw her as an inexperienced prison guard, in the military police, in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The film depicts alternating sequences of routinized boredom and tense emotional/physical encounters with foreign terrorist detainees. The centerpiece of the film is the tense interactions/confrontations between the novice prison guard, Stewart, and one of the detainee; a detainee named Ali.

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In another 2014 film, with Juliet Binoche, the Clouds of Sils Maria, directed by esteemed French director Olivier Assayas, Stewart earned a prestigious EuropeanCésar Award for Best Supporting Actress. About half of the film, which is set Switzerland and Italy, is a lively verbal/emotional tug-of-war between the two actresses. The film could be regarded, metaphorically, as two versions of the same woman, an older and an younger version, confronting each other.

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Olivier Assayas enlisted Stewart as the lead for the 2016 film Personal Shopper. She is the mesmerizing center of this dark and intriguing work; a film that cycles seamlessly through the multiple genres of a ghost story, a working woman in the world of fashion and celebrity, a murder mystery, and a psychological thriller.